The weekend news dump from the Obama administration was an immigration two-fer. First came word that the president would not take executive action to change immigration policy before the November congressional elections. Buried under that news was the less splashy but deeply troubling announcement that the administration plans to build a huge immigrant family detention center in Texas. Both spell bad news for immigrants without legal status and their families.
The decision to delay any administrative reform of immigration policy may reflect concern that the Republican Party would use the issue to win control of the Senate. That political calculus may or may not prove correct. But what's not in doubt is that while the administration delays, tens of thousands of immigrant families with deep roots in the United States may be broken apart and millions more will continue to live in fear of the same fate.
These families – a majority (over 60 percent) have lived in the US for over a decade and over four million have US citizen children – are now on notice that they continue to be at risk, at least until the November elections, maybe even longer. And if they’re broken up via deportation before President Obama provides relief, only a vote by Congress can bring them back together. (The comprehensive reform bill passed by a large majority in the Senate last year would have allowed deportees with close family members in the US to reenter the US and apply for provisional legal status. But that kind of congressional remedy won’t be available anytime soon, in light of a House of Representatives that recently voted to strip away protections even from newly arriving children.)
Meanwhile, in another harsh anti-family move, the Obama administration is continuing a vast expansion of family immigration detention with a new facility in southern Texas, which would house 2,400 people. Prior to June, the US government had fewer than 100 beds dedicated to family detention; with the just-announced center, it will have close to 4,000. This, even as the number of children crossing the border with Mexico continues to decline, and despite a broad recognition and international standards that children should never be held in immigration detention, which can cause them long-term psychological and emotional damage. Even more galling, the administration is working to deny bond to detained immigrant families, arguing that they are “national security” threats.
No wonder the administration chose to release these bits of news on a weekend, to minimize media attention. I guess if there was any time to try to hide shameful anti-family policies, this was it.
